THE DECLINE OF THE WEST?

The Reith Lectures are a prestigious yearly series in honor of the BBC's first director:

The Reith Lectures were inaugurated in 1948 by the BBC to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Sir John (later Lord) Reith, the corporation's first director-general.

John Reith maintained that broadcasting should be a public service which enriches the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC each year invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest.

The list of speakers is impressive and in addition to this fellow -

the list includes Robert Oppenheimer, George F. Kennan, Peter Medawar, John Kenneth Galbraith, Daniel Boorstin, John Searle, Steve Jones, John Keegan, Daniel Barenboim, Jeffrey Sachs, Jonathan Spence and Martin Rees.

This year's lecturer is a conservative hack, Niall Ferguson, who is unashamed to make preposterous wingnut suggestions such as this one:

Governments should adopt the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, which corporations abide by.

These principles are generally know by their acronym, GAAP, and contain many absurdities such as this nonsense:

Wall Street Says -2 + -2 = 4 as Liabilities Get New Bond Math

By Bradley Keoun

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- Leave it to Wall Street to profit from its own distress.
Merrill Lynch & Co., Citigroup Inc. and four other U.S. financial companies have used an accounting rule adopted last year to book almost $12 billion of revenue after a decline in prices of their own bonds.

Here's how it works, according to Richard Bove, an analyst at New York-based Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. A company decides to designate $100 million of its subordinated bonds as subject to mark-to-market accounting. The price of the bonds drops to 80 cents on the dollar from 100 cents. So the firm books $20 million on the ``presumed savings that you have on your liabilities,'' Bove said.